Margaret Cadwaladr has written a memoir Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos.
When I first came to Canada in the mid-1980s the Woodward’s Food Floor saved my life. It was literally the only place in Vancouver that sold jars of vegemite. And I certainly wasn’t the only one. Lots of other immigrants and travellers were able to find things from home, everything from Scandinavian rye crackers to saffron and matzo to rattlesnake meat imported from Florida.
Food Floor:
Margaret Cadwaladr kindly sent me her new memoir, Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, a nostalgic walk through the area, filled with black and white and colour photos.
Margaret started work at the downtown Woodward’s store in 1967, but her relationship with the store, like many locals, started way before that.
“I had known Woodward’s all my life. I remember, as a child, taking the tram down Main Street with my grandfather. We would visit the hardware department then go down the wide steps to the grocery department and order cases of Carnation condensed milk, grapefruit juice and tins of food for Muggins the cat,” She writes: “The next day the blue Woodward’s truck would deliver the order.”
Test Kitchen:
There was Bea Wright’s test kitchen that dished out advice and recipes, elevator operators a small café, a book shop and $1.49 day. Employees got to take their breaks on the roof with views of the North Shore mountains and harbour.
It was a good time to work in retail. Cadwaladr says decent wages and perks such as medical benefits, paid holidays, a pension, profit-sharing and a 15% discount, kept unions out. Social events included picnics at Bowen Island and roller-skating.
At its height, Woodward’s had 26 stores in BC and Alberta. Store #1, as it was known, operated at the corner of West Hastings and Abbott Streets for 90 years, while everything changed around it. When the store opened in 1903 for instance, the courthouse was at Victory Square and several theatres lined Hastings Street.
The chain went bankrupt in 1993 and store #1 sat empty and boarded up. The original building is now surrounded by retail stores and housing. A replica of the giant red W was installed on the new project in 2010. You can visit the original in the courtyard, near Stan Douglas’s spectacular photo mural depicting the Gastown riot of 1971.
Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days sells for $15.95 and is available through Margaret Cadwaladr’s website and Chapters/Indigo.
Related:
- The Woodward’s Christmas Windows
- $1.49 Day
- The Missing Elevator Operators of Vancouver
- A Brief History of the Woodwards Department Store
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.
17 comments on “Woodward’s: Store #1”
Woodwards brings back memories from my youth. My grandmother used to take me there on Saturdays and I loved the strawberry shortcake. The store in West Vancouver was very accommodating and had everything you needed and more. Sad to see it go, like so many others in the 1990s.
Ah, there was nothing quite like Woodward’s. I still miss the fabric section at the Woodward’s which was located in Metrotown. It was on the top floor and was marvelous. Although Woodward’s had extremely high prices, if you needed something, they had it. I enjoyed shopping at the Woodward’s for 5 years when we lived in New Westminster BC from 1982 – 1987. I purchased my first pair of fabric shears there, and they are still going strong.
Woodwards was and still is the best place Ive ever shopped at . The food floor was awesome. In my living room sits a rocking chair I bought for my then pregnant wife in 1981. I worked a block away from Woodwards from 1974 until EXPO forced CP transport to move to PoCo. Woodwards cashed CP paychecks on the 6th floor. The quality of the goods, the service and the food will likely never be matched. Some where Im sure Ive still got an old Woodwards credit card. The card was smaller than most other cards. Eatons, Sears, The Bay and Woodwards were anchor stores downtown and at malls all over the lower mainland. Great memories and sadness that such a great store had to close
I often shopped at Woodward’s downtown store before I started my evening shift as a bus driver. In the 1970s I drove an evening route that terminated at Victory Square. One night I stopped there for a few minutes and walked through the bus to check for lost property. On a seat there was a man’s hat, and when I picked it up and looked inside the hem there was the “Woodward’s” logo. I was in sight of the store where it might have been purchased.
Occasionally I rode in an elevator with a certain operator, and then started my shift. Later on that same operator would get on my bus to go home. Once I was in an elevator that got stuck between floors with a full load of people, and the operator immediately announced that it was probably a fuse that blew, and we would be moving shortly. She picked up the phone in the car to report the power loss, and five minutes later we resumed our trip.
Since the Food Floor was in the basement, the sixth floor was the bargain centre, and there was an express car that ran directly to that floor.
The senior operator usually dispatched the cars from an information stand on the main floor, and used castanets as a signal to the operators. If it got really busy, she would run another car.
I thought you might have been driving the bus in the photo Angus!
Woodward’s drew shoppers from the whole of the lower mainland, including me and my teenage friends from New Westminster, looking for bargains on jeans and shoes. Those shopping trips by bus were my earliest memories of Vancouver before I moved there in the ’70s.
Talk to 5 baby boomers who grew up in Vancouver and it seems like 4 of them will have worked at Woodwards in their younger days. I was at Oakridge (store #8) doing stock and shipping for the drugs and cosmetics dept. It was a great place to work and got me through high school and university. $1.49 day was “codenamed” B-Day (Bargain day) and an amazing amount of stock was moved on that day of each month. And who doesn’t remember the $1.49 day jingle?
Did you know about Woodward’s one-person peanut butter factory in that tower with the “W” on it? My friend Christine posted about it on her blog https://vanalogue.wordpress.com/tag/woodwards-peanut-butter/
I too had the privilege of not only shopping with my Mom at Woodward’s Food Floor and then in the Department Store at the other end of Park Royal, North Side, dating back to when it opened in the fifties, but when I turned sixteen and McDonald’s didn’t come through with there promise of a raise, I applied at Woodward’s downtown and was hired right away to work in the Hardware Dept. of Park Royal during my senior years at Hillside Secondary School, WV and on for a few more years until my career lead me to move out of West Van. During those years learning about retail and the company, I did not realize the impact it would have on my life, both personally and professionally with my later endeavours.
The FB group that continuously posts photos or stories about their experiences with the company warms my heart to no end. I truly miss this company and all it did for us.
My daughter just moved into the redevelopment of the building at Hasting and Abbott over this weekend and I so look forward to seeing how that corner now looks.
I recently met the son of the Head Chef at the Douglas Ranch and was so happy to hear the stories about Chunky as the person I imagined him to be.
Looking forward to reading the book.
I think I have Bea’s recipe book in my collection. I didn’t shop at Woodward’s as I lived in the Kootenays then, but the Vancouver Sun always had the recipes in the food section.
Eve, your blog seems to cover all my old places of work. The main post office, 625 Howe, and now Woodwards. I worked in cameras, in Penticton, but only for a few memorable months. When Woodwards opened in our town it immediately raised our quality of life. Before then the closest location was Kamloops, and that was a long way to go to get peanut butter and shampoo, albeit insanely good peanut butter and strangely liquid shampoo. One interesting thing about working at Woodwards – we got paid in cash. I guess they hoped you would spend some of it before you left the store. I still have some Woodwards Castile shampoo in the bathroom. A quick sniff takes me back to a happy time.
A great “needle to an anchor” store. 95 cent day, pumpkin pie, freshly ground peanut butter. Many met their lifetime mates working there. A never to be equaled store. Fond memories.
My husband and I met at Woodwards in 1971. I worked in the Dining Room as a server and he worked in the Grocery Dept. He also made the Woodwards peanut butter (using Spanish peanuts, of course). I loved that store and have many fond memories of it. I really miss the concept of a department store which carried just about everything.
Something few people know about Woodward’s is that for a few short years they sold cars. I have scoured the internet for information on this and found very little. This is from the Woodwards pensioners website:
“In 1959 when the Oakridge store opened, the Service Station sold cars, Peugeots, Triumphs, and Fiats.”
My Dad managed the Hardware department at Oakridge and in 1962 bought my mother a Triumph Herald from that store.
I have never heard this! Thanks for letting us know.
I worked at two Woodward’s Stores in Edmonton in the mid 1970s.
What I remember most was how they paid us in cash! I guess they hoped we would spend some of the money before we left the store.
My family always shopped at Woodwards in West Vancouver and occasionally in Vancouver. Clothes, groceries, they had everything and always good quality. I will never forget Mrs Woodwards famous Strawberry Pie. A particular favourite of my Dad’s. The best pie I have ever eaten, even decades later.
I still remember the scent of the clothing department! It always smelled like fresh cotton. Then cheap Chinese garbage came and people opted to buy it. It started with product 50 – 75 cents cheaper. They did not give a damn that for a few cents more they could get clothes and shoes of good quality that would last years. Chinese clothes and shoes lasted only a few months but the cheaper price won. When Canadian and US manufacturers went bankrupt, along with jobs, the Chinese prices went up. Now it’s virtually impossible to find anything made in North America. Everything is made to last a very short time so people have to keep buying. The young generation don’t know different.